MIAMI – The painful losses continue for the Miami Heat as the team falls to the Chicago Bulls, 114-109, marking their second straight loss coming off another game where they had a double-digit lead and blew it. Even though the Heat’s Bam Adebayo just got fined, he led the team along with Andrew Wiggins with 22 points as head coach Erik Spoelstra had a candid reaction to the result.

This marks the 16th time Miami had a double-digit lead and ended up losing the game, which is good for second in the league behind the Utah Jazz.

Erik Spoelstra is candid that the Heat have regressed

As the Heat head coach in Spoelstra has been positive after some of these losses, he was blunt after Saturday’s loss, telling ClutchPoints that the outing was a “regression.”

“We’ve been battling for several games, and I really liked a lot of things that were going on, even some of these losses. Today was a regression for one night,” Spoelstra said. “We have a competitive character, we’re going to bounce back, we had some of these things bubble up again, we know what they are. Some of the missed shots, poor decisions offensively, that would lead to a lack of focus defensively. We’re at our best when it doesn’t matter what’s going on.”

“With that said too, I felt like I didn’t do a good job with managing the minutes,” Spoelstra continued. “I wanted the game, thinking that we need some speed and a little bit more of the energy boost, and we got to lead. And so I thought we would try to extend it. But I think nobody in the locker room is going to make an excuse, our main guys are not going to make an excuse about it, but I felt like there was some fatigue in that fourth quarter. If I could have gotten them a little bit more of a break at some point during the game, I think we would have had enough of a boost to finish this off. But that’s on me. I have to do a better job for this team.”

An encouraging first half for the Heat

As the Heat have been without such players as Wiggins and Kel’el Ware, they made an immediate impact on return to the starting lineup on Saturday night. Before Wiggins would be subbed out in the first quarter, he scored nine points on shooting four of seven from the field.

Looking at Ware, his presence was immediately felt as he scored the first four points of the game and had a few blocks to frustrate Chicago early. It was a relatively clean first quarter as the team had no turnovers while shooting 50 percent from the field and made three of their six attempts from deep, led by Adebayo who had 10 points, continuing his hot streak offensively.

When it comes to the second period, Miami would continue to shoot over 50 percent from the field and build a 17-point lead at one point with around nine minutes left in the frame. As the quarter continued, the home team started to lose some rhythm, leading to questionable shot selection as the 17-point lead was dwindled to seven going into halftime.

In the second period, the Heat shot 32 percent from the field and made just three of 14 from beyond the arc, two coming from Terry Rozier who had an exciting play in hustling to save the ball and being rewarded with a three. After scoring 36 in the first quarter, Miami only scored 19 in the second.

Still, Miami has a chance to come out the second half and take back control of the game as they are looking to rid the narrative of always blowing double-digit leads.

Where it started to go downhill for the Heat

As the Heat’s fatal flaw this season has been blowing double-digit leads, they were on the verge of doing so to start the third period as Chicago scored the first six points to start the second half, which led to an early timeout from Erik Spoelstra. It would get to a point where the Bulls cut their deficit to just one point.

However, Miami would recover to end the frame as they scored a total of 34 points compared to the Bulls’ 30 as Herro, who only had six in the first half, put up 11 points. Plus, Rozier continued his hot shooting night with two more three-pointers, one at the buzzer heading into the fourth, which capped off an 8-0 run.

The fourth period would be a disaster for the team as even though they had an 11-point lead, they scored 20 points compared to Chicago’s 36. The worrying trend from the Heat continues as there isn’t much time left in the season to rectify it.

The Heat continue to blow double-digit leads late

With the Heat blowing another double-digit lead late in the game, this time going into the fourth quarter, there is no doubt that if the trend doesn’t turn around, this season will be defined by these deficiencies. It would be confounding to see where Miami would be in the Eastern Conference if even half of those games turned in their favor.

To make matters worse, looking at the last eight losses, seven have come from having leads in the fourth quarter, including the loss to the Bulls where they were missing Lonzo Ball, Nikola Vucevic, and others. Spoelstra has used the phrase “painful” before in terms of the losses and hopes a breakthrough is coming in the horizon. While fans hope so, there is very little time remaining as there are now 19 games left in the season.

At any rate, Miami looks to bounce back come Monday night where they host the Charlotte Hornets as the team is 0-2 in this five-game home stand.